Big Sulfer Creek Valley

Behind and way below those trees, sits my office/lab, while the well site location isn't all that attractive, the general location is:



These pics were taken about 1200 feet above and a half mile away from the rig.

Steam Tunnel?

Part of the road I drive over to the rig goes right by a set of cooling towers on one of the power plants out here in the Geysers. The plant sits out on a ridge, so when the wind blows just right, it blows the steam over the road (there are warning signs about this.



Of course, its much more interesting at night:

An Accreationary Wedge is Comming (repost)

An Accreationary Wedge is coming!
An Accreationary Wedge is coming!

This one; Accretionary Wedge #16 ... #15 #17, Recent Advancements (recent and/or noteable advancements or epiphanies that have directly affected your expertise, interests, or the work you do).

Not this one:


It shall be hosted right where your looking, this entry makes a nice little place holder. Please post a link to your articles in comments, or email them to me at Thorthr at cox.net. I will be deleting this post when the Wedge goes up and I'll have the Wedge up by Wednesday, December 24^th, 2008 Friday, March 20, 2009 (vernal equinox).

thanks
KC

P.S.
yes, that is xmas eve, gives you plenty of time to write something, even longer.

P.P.S.
ok, looks like I'm actually hosting #17 instead of #16 or #15 I picked up off of the who's hosting site:) thanks Dave, for saving me from have to do the math and subtract two instead of one

P.P.P.S
Sorry for all the delays, procrastination, and work conflicts are pain.
David and Lockwood, you havn't been forgotten.

Old Iron

The dozer that time forgot.

Occasionally construction companies and other entities that use heavy equipment either forget, or abandon pieces of equipment. If they are old, worn, or in really remote locations, it can be cheaper to abandon the equipment than to pay to have it taken down and moved, this is especially true of heavy dozers, this one was about the size of a D6, so that would put the weight around 30-45 thousand pounds, while that would fit on one flatbed with out being broken, getting a flatbed to the track and putting a nonfunctional track on said flatbed probably makes it cost prohibitive. That’s really sad though, this pieces of machinery is also a piece of history, its been a long time since Cat used a pulley system to lift the blade.

WANT!!!1!!1!!factorial!!!!1!

I love thinkgeek

BANG

See that little red star? That is the epicenter of an earthquake this morning, about 700 feet from where I was standing. There are a lot of minor quakes like that out here in the Geysers, in a one hour time span around that quake, there was a total of seven small quakes. What made this one interesting to me was the fact that I was practically on top of the epicenter, it didn't even feel like a regular quake, just a big BANG! Cool.

edit, it was the equvilant to someone setting off 4.74 tons of TNT a mile and half down.

Daily commute, part deux

Well it seems my daily commute has recently gotten more interesting:




Glad I own a jeep. They stop plowing the roads up here around 5pm, and I head up the mountain after 11pm... it can be interesting at times.

edit: these pictures were taken after Noon and the road had been plowed, when I go up the mountain, there are typically no fresh tracks in the in new snow.

re-edit:
the next day